“Not if we rush we won’t.” That loathsome word.
Nimec reached for the shelf where he’d put his wristwatch before climbing into the shower… well, technically speaking, where he’d put the WristLink wearable microcomputer that did everything under the sun but find the basic necessities for getting him shaved, dressed, and out of the house in time to drive the kids to their respective schools before heading on to his office at UpLink San Jose, where Nimec presided over the company’s welfare as Chief of Global Security, a job he could hopefully carry out with greater success than his latest inexpert shot at solo parenting. This while Annie — Nimec’s bride of four months, and long-experienced mother of the poor children left in his bumbling care — was off in Houston making men and women into astronauts.
“This contraption says it’s a quarter to eight,” Nimec said, glancing at the WristLink as he buckled it on. “Still gives us fifteen minutes to get out of here.”
Chris checked his own watch.
“Pete, mine says it’s almost five to eight…”
“And mine’s synched to radio signals from the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which makes it official,” Nimec said. “Think yours can beat that?”
Chris looked at him.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “And I can beat you at karate.”
“Someday you might,” Nimec said. “Meanwhile, I need to call your mother.”
He took the cellular from Chris, flipped it open, held it up to his cheek.
“An-nnuh-ieee,” he mouthed with a dragged-out slowness that made him sound piteously speech-impaired… and feel idiotic since he knew it was unnecessary with advanced voice dial interfaces. Old habits died hard, he guessed.
A ring tone in his ear, and then Annie’s name appeared on his caller identification display… as he imagined would be true in the reverse.
“Hi, Pete.”
Nimec smiled. Hearing her gave him a lift. It also made him feel like a lovesick adolescent. She’d been gone four days, what was that? But to be fair with himself, it had been like this since they got back from their honeymoon. Three or four days a week, every week. The separations demanded by Annie’s unfinished job commitments weren’t your standard ingredients for newly wedded bliss.
“Annie, you at work?”
“I wish,” she said. “Stuck in traffic.”
“Where about?”
“Maybe a half mile from the Center,” she said, using NASA shorthand for the immense complex of research, operational, training, and administrative office facilities that constituted the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center between Houston and Galveston. “Routine maintenance. They’ve closed two lanes on the interstate.”
“Lousy timing.”
“Couldn’t be worse,” she said. “Talk about a screw-up, Pete. Orion Three launches in about a month…”
Five weeks, two days, he thought. Then you’re finished working, over and out, and we’re back in orbit together.
“… and we’ve got the shuttle crew in the last stage of intensive training. Full phase mission sims, a rendezvous and docking run-through this morning. So what happens? Some geniuses on the Texas Highways Board decide now’s when to repave.”
“You’d think they’d have the sense to coordinate with LBJ,” Nimec said.
“You sure would… and I left the apartment forty minutes early to avoid this jam, if you can believe it.” Annie sighed. “Anyway, enough griping. Everything okay at home?”
“Yeah,” Nimec said. “Well, pretty much. Got a small problem. Or two. But if you’re driving…”
“More like staring at the butt end of a tanker truck,” she said. “What are ‘nonedible animal fat products,’ by the way?”
“No idea. Why?”
“Because the term’s so disgusting it fascinates me,” Annie said. “And because a sign on the truck says it’s carrying them and warns not to tailgate.”
“Really, Annie, this’ll wait until you get off the road… ”
“Come on, I’m hands-free with my phone,” she said. “What can’t you find this morning?”
“How’d you know—?”
“Pete, you have the same problem or two every morning,” Annie said. “So let’s hear.”
Nimec cleared his throat.
“Fresh razor blades,” he said. “Been looking for them everywhere.”
“Did you try your bathroom closet?”
Nimec turned toward the closet door right behind him, raised his eyebrows in consternation.
“Well, no…”
“There should be a bunch on the middle shelf.”
He went to take a look, found several packages in plain sight beside hefty oversupplies of shampoo and shaving cream.
“See them?” Annie said.
“Yeah, thanks.” Nimec reached for a pack and tore open the cellophane. “Could’ve sworn I had my blades under the sink, though…”
“Once upon a time, Pete. Under it, over it, on it. But I’ve been putting them all in the closet for months.”
“That long?”
“Since I came along to impose order on your existence.”
Nimec thought a moment.
“Guess we have been over this before,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Annie said. “What’s next?”
“My dress shirts.”
“None in your drawer?”
“Not a single one.”
“Then Chloe didn’t get around to putting away the laundry on Friday,” she said.
“The advantages of our hiring on a housekeeper.”
“Come on, Pete. She’s only part-time.”
“Still, I used to know where—”
“The washroom,” Annie said. “That wicker basket on the floor next to the machines.”
“You sure?”
“Guaranteed. She always stacks them there after picking them up from the dry cleaner,” Annie said. “Sorts it with the laundry when she’s done so she can put everything away at once.”
“Hold it, let me see.”
Nimec held the phone away from his mouth, sent Chris on a hurried bee through the condo. A couple of minutes later he reappeared in the doorway, his younger sister scrambling up behind him. Each of them had a folded, banded white shirt held out flat with both hands like a pizza box.
“Pete…?”
“We’re good here, Annie.”
“Good that you’re good,” she said. “Traffic’s starting to move.”
“And we’d better do the same at our end. Call you at the apartment tonight?”
“Make it late if you’re going to,” Annie said. “I’m in for a long day in Building Five.”
Nimec quietly scratched under his ear.
“I love you, Pete. Hugs and kisses to the brats.”
“Back at you.”
Nimec flipped the phone shut, dropped it into the pocket of his robe, and ordered the kids out of the room while he shaved.
Rushing to finish, he nicked his face badly in several spots.
The trio of battered old coal trucks and their fully laden open-bed trailers had thundered through the Pakistani night under a three-quarter moon, journeying almost a hundred-fifty kilometers northwest from the rail yard in Islamabad toward Chikar, an inkblot-small village with limited overland access amounting to a few lightly traveled ribbons of blacktop that dipped and wove between jagged, snowy mountain peaks.
As he crested a steep rise under a projecting spur of hillside, the lead vehicle’s driver puzzled at what his headlights revealed straight ahead.
He glanced at the man dozing beside him, then reached across to shake his elbow. “Khalid, snap to it.”
Khalid stirred, his head still nodding against his chest.